Tough on drugs, soft on booze

Alcohol good, drugs bad: I'm not sure if I'm missing something here, but that's one of the conclusions that could be drawn from the Government's new licensing law, which will allow 24-hour drinking in certain circumstances. When the legislation comes into force, serious drinkers will be able to find places to indulge at any hour of the day and night, which is, on the face of it, a daring endorsement of the proposition that prohibition doesn't work.

Alcohol good, drugs bad: I'm not sure if I'm missing something here, but that's one of the conclusions that could be drawn from the Government's new licensing law, which will allow 24-hour drinking in certain circumstances. When the legislation comes into force, serious drinkers will be able to find places to indulge at any hour of the day and night, which is, on the face of it, a daring endorsement of the proposition that prohibition doesn't work.

Drinkers, we are told, will behave more responsibly when the restrictions are lifted, pacing themselves instead of indulging in the time-honoured British custom of lining up several pints or Bacardi Breezers in an attempt to consume as much alcohol as possible before closing time.

Why, in that case, doesn't the same argument apply to drugs? I'm not advocating 24-hour crack dens, but I'm also not sure why we are supposed to believe that the way to deal with one category of addictive substances is to ban it, while another needs to be made even more freely available than it already is.

This latter proposition, which has been challenged by senior police officers who fear the cost of dealing with more alcohol-fuelled disorder in town centres, looks like another instance of ministers legislating without thinking through the consequences. I have a suspicion that liberalising the laws on drinking (and gambling) is supposed to make up for all the ghastly authoritarian stuff coming out of the Home Office - ID cards, restrictions on free speech and internment for foreign Muslims. It's the kind of thing that might have played well with focus groups, convincing ministers that they had found a relatively easy way of appealing to hedonistic young adults, sucking up to big business and appearing liberal, all at the same time.

By the end of last week, they were beginning to wake up to the prospect of rocketing bills for policing, combined with a backlash from the public as resources are diverted into areas with lots of late-night bars and pubs. There is already a feeling that the police don't spend enough time dealing with burglary and violent crime, and the Culture Secretary, Tessa Jowell, finally responded to some of these anxieties on Friday. The drinks industry may be forced to bear the cost of extra policing, she announced, while persistent offenders will be barred from pubs and bars in specified areas. Of course, this will happen only after they have made a nuisance of themselves on several occasions, swelling the crowds of drunken, aggressive revellers who vomit on pavements and make life a misery for people using night buses and other forms of public transport.

I am always amazed at the resistance in this country to the idea that alcohol is a huge social problem. It has become fashionable to observe that Britain doesn't have the relaxed café culture that is to be found in Continental cities, implying that we simply need to change our habits a bit - drink with meals, for instance, or consume more wine and less lager. What this ignores is the fact that alarming numbers of adults are actually dependent on alcohol, and that it is a form of addiction that ruins as many lives as hard drugs, if not more. That won't be solved by the new law and evidence from countries such as Norway, where alcohol is punitively taxed, suggests that hard drinkers are not put off by price.

What is needed is a new approach to alcohol, away from the old idea that there is something heroic about heavy drinking, and involving the kind of hard-hitting health campaigns that have successfully targeted smoking.

The new legislation creates the impression that ministers don't know what they are doing, as well as exposing New Labour's curious approach to morality - more Catholic than Methodist. Ministers go in for random, libertarian outbursts yet they also ban things. Tough on drugs, soft on booze and gambling: if this strange New Labour beast deserves a label, it would have to be an oxymoron. Laissez-faire Puritanism, perhaps.